Game studies or 'ludology', is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a discipline of cultural studies that deals with all types of games throughout history. This field of research utilizes the tactics of, at least, anthropology, sociologyand psychology, while examining aspects of the design of the game, the players in the game, and finally, the role the game plays in its society or culture. Game studies is oftentimes confused with the study of video games, but this is only one area of focus; in reality game studies encompasses all types of gaming, including sports, board games, etc.

Before video games, game studies often only included anthropological work, studying the games of past societies.[1] However, once video games were introduced and became mainstream, game studies were updated to perform sociological and psychological observations;[2] to observe the effects of gaming on an individual, his or her interactions with society, and the way it could impact the world around us.

There are three main approaches to game studies: the social science approach asks itself how games affect people and uses tools such as surveys and controlled lab experiments. The humanities approach asks itself what meanings are expressed through games, and uses tools such as ethnography and patient observation. The industrial and engineering approach applies mostly to video games and less to games in general, and examines things such as computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and networking.[3] Like other media disciplines, such as television and film studies, game studies often involves textual analysis and audience theory.

It wasn’t until Irving Finkel organized a colloquium in 1990 that grew into the International Board Game Studies Association, Gonzalo Frascapopularized the term ludology (from the Latin word for game, ludus) in 1999,[4] the publication of the first issues of academic journals like Board Game Studies in 1998 and Game Studies in 2001, and the creation of the Digital Games Research Association in 2003, that scholars began to get the sense that the study of games could (and should) be considered a field in its own right. As a young field, it gathers scholars from different disciplines that had been broadly studying games, such as psychology, anthropology, economy, education, and sociology. The earliest known use of the term "ludology" occurred in 1982, in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's “Does Being Human Matter – On Some Interpretive Problems of Comparative Ludology.”[5]

One of the earliest social science theories (1971) about the role of video games in society involved violence in video games, later becoming known as the catharsis theory. The theory suggests that playing video games in which you perform violent acts might actually channel latent aggression, resulting in less aggression in the players real lives.[6] However, a meta-study performed by Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman, in 2001, examined data starting from the 1980s up until the article was published, the purpose of this study was to examine whether or not playing violent video games led to an increase in aggressive behaviors.[7] They concluded that exposure to violence in video games did indeed cause an increase in aggression. However, it has been pointed out, and even stressed, by psychologist Jonathan Freedman that this research was very limited and even problematic since overly strong claims were made and the authors themselves seemed extremely biased in their writings. More recent studies, such as the one performed by Christopher J. Ferguson at Texas A&M International University have come to drastically different conclusions. In this study, individuals were either randomly assigned a game, or allowed to choose a game, in both the randomized and the choice conditions exposure to violent video games caused no difference in aggression. A later study (performed by the same people) looked for correlations between trait aggression, violent crimes, and exposure to both real life violence and violence in video games, this study suggests that while family violence and trait aggression are highly correlated with violent crime, exposure to video game violence was not a good predictor of violent crime, having little to no correlation, unless also paired with the above traits that had a much higher correlation.[8] Over the past 15 years, a large number of meta-studieshave been applied to this issue, each coming to its own conclusion, resulting in little consensus in the ludology community. It is also thought that even nonviolent video games may lead to aggressive and violent behaviour. Anderson and Dill seem to believe that it may be due to the frustration of playing video games that could in turn result in violent, aggressive behaviour.[9]

Game designers Amy Jo Kim and Jane McGonigal have suggested that platforms which leverage the powerful qualities of video games in non-game contexts can maximize learning.[10][11] Known as the gamification of learning, using game elements in non-game contexts extracts the properties of games from within the game context, and applies them to a learning context such as the classroom.

Another positive aspect of video games is its conducive character towards the involvement of a person in other cultural activities. The probability of game playing increases with the consumption of other cultural goods (e.g., listening to music or watching television) or active involvement in artistic activities (e.g., writing or visual arts production).[12] Video games by being complementary towards more traditional forms of cultural consumption, inhibit thus value from a cultural perspective.

More sociologically-informed research has sought to move away from simplistic ideas of gaming as either 'negative' or 'positive', but rather seeking to understand its role and location in the complexities of everyday life.[13]

A major focus in game studies is the debate surrounding narratology and ludology. Many ludologists believe that the two are unable to exist together,[14] while others believe that the two fields are similar but should be studied separately. Many narratologists believe that games should be looked at for their stories, like movies or novels. The ludological perspective says that games are not like these other mediums due to the fact that a player is actively taking part in the experience and should therefore be understood on their own terms. The idea that a videogame is "radically different to narratives as a cognitive and communicative structure"[15] has led the development of new approaches to criticism that are focused on videogames as well as adapting, repurposing and proposing new ways of studying and theorizing about videogames.[16][17] A recent approach towards game studies[which?] starts with an analysis of interface structures and challenges the keyboard-mouse paradigm with what is called a "ludic interface".

Academics across both fields provide scholarly insight into the different sides of this debate. Gonzalo Frasca, a notable ludologist due to his many publications regarding game studies, argues that while games share many similar elements with narrative stories, that should not prevent games to be studied as games.[18] He seeks not "to replace the narratologic approach, but to complement it."[18]

Jesper Juul, another notable ludologist, argues for a stricter separation of ludology and narratology. Juul argues that games "for all practicality can not tell stories."[14] This argument holds that narratology and ludology cannot exist together because they are inherently different. Juul claims that the most significant difference between the two is that in a narrative, events "have to" follow each other, whereas in a game the player has control over what happens.[14]

Garry Crawford and Victoria K. Gosling argue in favor of narratives being an essential part of games as "it is impossible to isolate play from the social influences of everyday life, and in turn, play will have both intended and unintended consequences for the individual and society."[19]The Last of Us is a video game released in 2013 that has been referred to as a narrative "masterpiece."[20] Proponents of the narratology side of game studies argue that The Last of Us and similar games that have followed it and preceded it, serve as examples that games can in fact tell stories.

其他研究领域Other areas of research

正如大多数学术研究的学科一样，游戏研究也有一些更专业化领域或子领域。

As is common with most academic disciplines, there are a number of more specialized areas or sub-domains of study.

In light of population ageing, there has been an interest into the use of games to improve the overall health and social connectedness of ageing players. For example, Adam Gazzaley and his team have designed NeuroRacer (a game that improves cognitive tasks outside of the game among its 60+ year old participants[22]), while the AARP has organized a game jam to improve older people's social connections.[23] Researchers such as Sarah Mosberg Iversen have argued that most of the academic work on games and ageing has been informed by notions of economical productivity,[24] while Bob De Schutter and Vero Vanden Abeele have suggested a game design approach that is not focused on age-related decline but instead is rooted in the positive aspects of older age.[25]

Massive multiplayer online games can give economists clues about the real world. Markets based on digital information can be fully tracked as they are used by players, and thus real problems in the economy, such as inflation, deflation and even recession. The solutions the game designers come up with can therefore be studied with full information, and experiments can be performed where the economy can be studied as a whole. These games allow the economists to be omniscient, they can find every piece of information they need to study the economy, while in the real world they have to work with presumptions.

Former Finance Minister of Greece and Valve's in-house economist Yanis Varoufakis studied EVE Online and argued that video game communities give economists a venue for experimenting and simulating the economies of the future.[26][27] Edward Castronova has studied virtual economies within a variety of games including Everquest and World of Warcraft.[28][29]

The psychological research into games has yielded theories on how playing video games may be advantageous, for both children and for adults. Some theories claim that video games in fact help improve cognitive abilities, rather than impede their development. These improvement theories include the improvement of visual contrast sensitivity.[30] Other developments include the ability to locate something specific among various impediments, this primarily done first-person shooter games where the protagonist must look at everything in a first person view while playing, by doing this they increase their spatial attention due having to locate something among an area of diversions.[30] Games accomplish this by having action in them and such a player must remain observant of the surroundings of the video game in order to achieve success should an impediment come to obstruct their playing in the virtual world.[30]

Another cognitive enhancement that is given by playing video games would be brain functioning speed, due to the constant playing and need to think while playing in order to do well in the game. This constant thinking allows the brain to constantly run and the speed of thought is sharpened greatly, because the need to think quickly is required to succeed.[30] In addition to the pattern being increased, another increase would be the attention of the video game player. This is due to the video games of the action genre having continuous fighting that requires the user’s constant attention and in the process the skill of concentration is also sharpened due to the concentration the user must have on the screen the game is displayed on.

The overcoming of the condition known as dyslexia is also considered an improvement due to the continuous utilization of controllers for the video games. This continuous process helps to train the users to overcome their condition which impedes in their abilities of interpretation.[30] The ability of hand-eye coordination is also improved thanks in part to video games, due to the need to operate the controller and view the screen displaying the content all at the same time.[30] The coordination of the player is enhanced due the playing and continuous observation of a video game since the game gives high mental stimulation and coordination is important and therefore enhanced due to the constant visual and physical movement that is produced from the playing of the video game.[30]

The playing of video games can also help increase a player's social skills. This is done by playing online multiplayer games which can require constant communication, this leads to socialization between players in order to achieve the goal within the game they may be playing. In addition it can help the users to meet new friends over their online games and at the same time communicate with friends they have already made in the past; those playing together online would only strengthen their already established bond through constant cooperation. Some video games are specifically designed to aid in learning, because of this another benefit of playing video games could be the educational value provided with the entertainment. Some video games present problem solving questions that the player must think on in order to properly solve, while action orientated video games require strategy in order to successfully complete. This process of being forced to think critically helps to sharpen the mind of the player.[30][31]

One aspect of game studies is the study of gaming culture. People who play video games are a subculture of their own. Gamers will often form communities with their own languages, attend conventions where they will dress up as their favorite characters, and have gaming competitions. One of these conventions, Gamescon 2017, had a record attendance with over 350,000 attendees.[32]

Jump up^ Anderson, C.A.; Dill, K.E. (2000). "Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in the laboratory and in life". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 4: 772–790. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.772.